Hypospadias and Epispadias Association, Inc

Surgery at Age 17

I had noticed a difference in my penis when I was very young. My brother (who was 4 years older than me) and I would take baths together. I had extra skin covering the head of mine and his looked to me more like a mushroom. I recall that I asked my mom about it and she told me not to worry, that I was just fine. As a young adult I was told that the reason I still had a foreskin was because I had an allergic reaction to a drug that was given to my mom during my birth and while I was in the area of the hospital where folks can view the newborns, I stopped breathing. Someone noticed that I was turning blue and alerted a nurse. They didn’t want to put me through any more trauma and so I was left with foreskin.

Growing up, I didn’t have any problem urinating, although it was usually not in a straight stream. I had no problems having an ejaculation either although, down the line I found out that other guys had much more of a “spurt” than I usually had. Rarely did I ejaculate with any projectile. It felt good but it pretty much just skipped out rather than shoot out.

When I was in seventh grade a guy came up to me in the boys locker room and as we were alone he unzipped my pants and took my penis in his hands. Before I knew what was going on he had completely retracted my foreskin. Although no one ever told me this, I was always afraid that if I pulled back on this skin it was be like tearing flesh off my body. My foreskin had never gone back, even when I was fully erect. It never covered my penis head completely either, just the tip was exposed. So this guy pulls back my foreskin and it doesn’t hurt me at all. The sight was not too pleasant though. I had pale yellow flecks under this foreskin that I later found out was called smegma. I am surprised that there wasn’t more after so many years of never being exposed and surprised that I never had any problems because of that. After being retracted, whenever I was erect the skin would now go completely back on its own (and my hygiene improved a great deal). Retracting the foreskin brought to my attention that my slit was very large compared to the few other penises I had seen (I got an early start sexually, “thanks” to an overly horny cousin).

The slit is on the underside of my penis starting near the top of the head and is about 1/2 an inch long and about 1/4 of an inch below the slit is a small hole making it look like an exclamation mark! I urinate from the larger hole but if I squeeze the larger hole together while I pee, the smaller hole lets drips of urine come out (I was curious to see how it worked). At seventeen I had my mom take me to a urologist because I wanted to have a more “normal” looking penis. The doctor told me I needed to have some scar tissue removed and to make my erections less tight. I never had any pain or problems with erections and I told the doctor this but he seemed to think it was a problem so I had this corrective surgery. Honestly I don’t notice much of a difference. My penis has never pointed straight out and still doesn’t (it leans to my left). I don’t recall the reason why but I never went back to the doctor for any more surgeries or even follow-ups.

As far as reactions from sexual partners goes, I suppose I have been fairly lucky. I have had numerous partners, mostly other males, and I can think of four that seemed to react badly to the “look” of my penis. It isn’t a small penis in length or girth (7″ long and 6″ around at the widest point, it looks a bit like a club, being wider at the top and narrowing down). Only one of the 4 that seemed to have a reaction actually told me that my penis scared him. The other three just stopped in the midst of having sex and we ended up masturbating. I suppose the honest guy was best but they all made me feel a bit on the grotesque side. That’s a small number compared to the other people who seemed to have no reaction at all to my condition. I am with a partner of 12-1/2 years and I asked him if he recalled his feelings when he first saw my large slit and he honestly doesn’t remember it making him feel anything negative at all. I only recall a couple of other guys who even mentioned it to me (one asking if I used to have a “prince albert” — a pierced penis).

I hope my story will in some way help anyone who may be going through troubled times because of this condition and show you that there is hope for a good and fulfilling life. Thanks for reading and I welcome your feedback.